We first heard about this secret agent game over a decade and a half ago!

Yes, it was at the 2007 press-only E3 (well, that doesn’t exist anymore either…) that Rockstar announced Agent, then a PS3 exclusive without a name. The game was publicly christened in 2009, and here’s what Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser had to say about it at the time: “We have always loved making action games, and with Agent we are making what we believe will be the ultimate action game. Agent is a game we have wanted to make for a long time. The team in Edinburgh are doing an amazing job of combining intense action, atmosphere and story in a great period setting to create something that feels very unique. We cannot wait for people to experience this game.

Only the game, set in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War and featuring espionage, counterintelligence, and political assassination, was never released. In May 2011, Rockstar confirmed that it was still in development, and a few months later some images of it were released, but not officially because Rockstar North’s environment artist had added them to his portfolio. Then nothing for years, except for Rockstar’s constant renewal of the Agent brand, which it left behind in November 2018.

In November of that year, Obbe Vermeij, the former technical director of Rockstar North, wrote that Agent would have been more linear than Rockstar’s other open-world titles, as it would have had several different locations (e.g., a French Mediterranean town, a Swiss ski resort, Cairo, and at the end a big shootout with lasers in space) and a scene where we’re being chased while skiing. Since the developers were split between Grand Theft Auto V and Agent, the latter got most of the attention.

Two (mostly underwater) image montages from Agent have surfaced on Reddit, so once again we can ask the question: what if…?

Source: WCCFTech